Applying to Ph.D. programs in the U.S. from Canadian undergrad

[Nanashi]

If your going to stay in quantative fields I'd pick UBC, Toronto or even Mcmasters over Mcgill in a heart beat. I have to say as an American who went to Canada, McGill doesn't seem to live up to hype. There were a lot of factors that made me choose what I did over other schools, and it had nothing to do with the econ programs. If your going out of province, UBC is the only school in canada to guarantee housing to 1st year students who live outside of vancouver, that fact alone changes your daily life substantially. Also its faculty to student ratios are quite high. Even though some upper level classes can be quite large. I found this to be a substantial advantage over places like MCGILL which had class sizes of 400-500 in 4th year.

Having my undergraduate from UBC, and comparing to american departments the fundamental strength of their program is that they offer variety to explore. UBC has a catalog of almost 75 unique undergraduate courses in econ, of which they offer 50. Their honors program almost guarantees admission to their graduate school. The majors program can be quite rigorous. The catalog of courses generally allows that a student if they wish could probably see most of the material that a 1st year grad student sees if they play their cards right (Especially if you take honors, certain quantative electives). The catch is you have to get into the major first which requires an 73 average from 2nd year students (which is doable, but above the average student). The honors requires you to be 80% or better. However they do drop a few courses when calculating this average to prevent a one or two low courses from destroying the average.

The fundamental of weakness of the department is limited access to faculty. Most of the big names do not teach undergraduate core courses, except in the honors curriculum. Instead UBC has tenured instructors which are phd holders teaching those courses. They occasionally teach a single elective field course. There are very few direct research oppurtunities for undergrads in econ. Instead UBC's program requires a seminar which requires students to write on piece of literature that is similar to a research paper. (According to the undergrad head, Dr.neary the top 15% of these papers are usually good enough to get published somewhere). These are usually small seminars of 12 to 15 students that are headed by an actual faculty member. Each seminar is completely unique as they are themed on the faculties specialization. Honors students do not take this seminar instead have a different seminar in the fall of their senior year and write a thesis in their last semester (which is 40 pages long). They are individually supervised for their thesis, and have a certain degree of choice to choose faculty which supervises them. This is where the opportunity to get a recommendation from a faculty member who is well known in the field comes along.

[NB888]

UofT is very huge. I'd be reluctant to go there unless I had thoroughly considered the other options. It is not clear that UWO, Queen's, or UBC are any lower on the hierarchy of economics departments. I've seen some ranking charts that had UWO and UBC higher than UofT in economics. Several people in my family, on both sides, have attended UofT for undergraduate study, and they typically don't consider it a very convenient place for learning.

[Nanashi]

I don't think I've ever seen any ranking that ranks western higher than U of T. I've seen many rankings that says western and queens are good universities. UBC tends to better on rankings which consider the publication of all the faculty as opposed to just the top publishers. Which sort of indicates that UBC is probably just an all around department, and lacks a lot of super stars. Though some of the guys rank highly within their field.

Toronto is ranked highly across every field, simply due to its sheer size. Canadian schools particularly graduate schools rankings are largely a function of their resources. If you look at the doctoral/medical class of universities the ones that rank best on other rankings for over all university are the ones that tend to have biggest per student endowment, and those are usually the ones larger in size. Toronto has one campus with 80,000 students. UBC is not by any means a small campus with 40,000.

Of course rankings may become meaningless when you look at this.
iam.ubc.ca/ubctour/ubctour.html

[HighSchoolKid]

U of T is no bigger than UBC.

33,371 undergrads - U of T, Downtown
36,771 undergrads - UBC Vancouver

What am I not seeing here?

I'm now choosing between U of T and UBC.

[NB888]

Edit: The ranking that had UWO #1 in Canada was not recently published. The time period included the 1980s, which might not be recent enough to interest anyone here. It measured impact of research by people who received Ph.D.'s at that department, not by people who worked at that department. Impact was measured in citations per page of published articles. UBC was #1 by a large margin in the number of articles per graduate student, number of pages per graduate student, and citations per graduate student. In terms of impact, the ranking was UWO, Queens, Toronto, McMaster, then UBC. For volume, it was UBC, Queens, Toronto, UWO, McMaster. That ranking isn't recent. But even so, I still don't think there's much basis for believing that UWO and Queen's are lower on the hierarchy than UofT or UBC, or that UBC is lower than UofT.

Five years ago, there was one guy who finished a Ph.D. in economics at UWO and then had his first academic job at University of Pennsylvania. I realize that proves nothing about the quality of the program, but it is rare for a Canadian Ph.D. student to go directly to a US department that is so high ranked.

If you only count the St. George campus, then UofT probably doesn't have more students than UBC. If I were choosing among those 4 for undergraduate study, I'd probably be most interested in Queen's and UWO. But, since you appear to have already eliminated those two, that is irrelevant. I have no idea if UBC would be any better or worse than UofT. UBC is also large.

[postgradecon]

Originally Posted by HighSchoolKid

U of T is no bigger than UBC.

33,371 undergrads - U of T, Downtown
36,771 undergrads - UBC Vancouver

What am I not seeing here?

I'm now choosing between U of T and UBC.

Maybe because when they were talking about the size, they meant of the economics department, not the whole university.

[economía]

UBC has 24,000 full-time equivalents to U of T's 33,371, the numbers seemed a little off and as already mentioned, UBC's econ program is smaller.

Also, you might be interested to know that one of the professors here at UBC seems to have been accepted to Northwestern straight out of undergrad from UBC's BA Honours Econ degree.

[HighSchoolKid]

I noticed that as well.

[Nanashi]

High school kid your missing the numbers for grad students which brings the campuses size pretty similar (there are 11,000 grad students). Toronto also has two other fairly large campuses which brings it up to the largest university in canada.


I think as a high school kid you need to factor a bit of other things than economics programs. You certainly should look at the overall academics. You need to also factor the school life, and their general experience to determine what school is right for you. In canada this may not be normal, but in the U.S when determining undergraduate institution we try to visit the schools we wish to attend. I visited UBC, Mcgill, Toronto, Mcmaster, and waterloo (along with 10 other schools in the U.S) before I picked where I wanted to apply. Most of my classmates who were seriously considering schools outside of their state did the same.



I outlined reasons I chose vancouver. Despite Utoronto, and Mcgill being better known in the U.S. UBC was the only large school in canada to guarantee housing to 1st year students. Albiet that applies only to students outside of Greater Vancouver. This is something which is standard practice in almost all american schools (some schools require 1st year dorms living). This drastically changes your school experience, as the campus becomes part of your life and not just a school you go to. I find that commuter students tend to be less involved and have less oppurtunities. Another reason was I wasn't sure if I was so interested in sciences that I'd want to be in a school like Waterloo, and UBC simply felt smaller than Toronto or Mcgill. I'm sure if I had factored and valued different things I may have ended up somewhere else. For example waterloo is probably the place to be if your interested in applied sciences.



You may not windup doing economics or who knows. Canadian Schools are not like american schools. All the universities in canada have a certain basic standard, and they are all public. Toronto, Queens, Western, UBC are all fine institutions for economics. I'm sure from McMaster, York, Mcgill, Waterloo you will be able to find placements in to top canadian M.A's which will help launch you into a PH.d. I know plenty of UBC masters students who went to smaller canadian universities (SFU, Mcgill). A Ph.d from any of canada's big four will let you find employment at another big four if your good. UBC hires their own, and several of their top people are from Queens and Western Ontario (Beadry and Devreaux). So what I'm bordering on as long as your in Canada where there are less than a 100 institutions, just figure out what school you like the best and your likely to do well at, and don't obsess so much about the overall name and ranking. Professors don't. If its good in a field the professors know the department. All my professors know UBC. I'm sitting taking PH.d. courses (before I apply to programs) at some unknown department, about 3500 miles from vancouver.

So basically just try to really figure out what school is the place you really want to be. Just focus on doing well there. From what I've seen, and been told. It really doesn't effect your oppurtunities for masters at another canadian university.

[HighSchoolKid]

UBC, hurrah!